Reality television

Reality television is a genre of television programming that documents unscripted situations and actual occurrences, and often features a previously publicly unknown cast. The genre often highlights personal drama and conflict to a much greater extent than other unscripted television such as documentary shows. The genre has various standard tropes, such as reality TV confessionals used by cast members to express their thoughts, which often double as the shows' narration. In competition-based reality shows, a notable subset, there are other common elements such as one participant being eliminated per episode, a panel of judges, and the concept of immunity from elimination.

The genre may have begun in earnest in 1991 with the Dutch series Nummer 28, which was the first show to bring together strangers and record their interactions.[1] It then exploded as a phenomenon in the late 1990s and early 2000s with the global success of the series Survivor and Big Brother.[2] These shows and a number of others (usually also competition-based) became global franchises, spawning local versions in dozens of countries. Reality television as a whole has become a fixture of television programming. In the United States, various channels have retooled themselves to focus on reality programs, most famously MTV, which began in 1981 as a music video pioneer, before switching to a nearly all-reality format in the early 2000s.

Reality television has faced significant criticism since its rise in popularity. Much of the criticism has centered on the use of the word "reality", and such shows' attempt to present themselves as a straightforward recounting of events that have occurred. Critics have argued that reality television shows do not present reality in ways both implicit (participants being placed in artificial situations) and deceptive or even fraudulent, such as misleading editing, participants being coached in what to say or how to behave, storylines generated ahead of time, and scenes being staged or re-staged for the cameras. Other criticisms of reality television shows include that they are intended to humiliate or exploit participants (particularly on competition shows); that they make stars out of either untalented, fame-unworthy people, infamous personalities, or both; and that they glamorize vulgarity and materialism.

Contents

History1

1940s–1950s1.1

1960s–1970s1.2

1980s–1990s1.3

2000s1.4

2010s1.5

Subgenres2

Documentary-style2.1

Reality legal programming2.2

Reality competition/game shows2.3

Immunity2.3.1

Confession room2.3.2

Self-improvement/makeover2.4

Renovation2.5

Social experiment2.6

Hidden cameras2.7

Supernatural and paranormal2.8

Hoaxes2.9

Criticism and analysis3

"Reality" as misnomer3.1

Political and cultural impact3.2

As a substitute for scripted drama3.3

Instant celebrity3.4

Youth audience3.5

Appeal3.6

Similar works in popular culture4

Pop culture references5

Films5.1

Television5.2

Books5.3

Other influences on popular culture6

See also7

References8

Further reading9

External links10

History

Television formats portraying ordinary people in unscripted situations are almost as old as the television medium itself. Producer-host Allen Funt's Candid Camera, in which unsuspecting people were confronted with funny, unusual situations and filmed with a hidden camera, first aired in 1948, and is often seen as a prototype of reality television programming.[3][4]

In the 1950s, game shows Beat the Clock and Truth or Consequences involved contestants in wacky competitions, stunts, and practical jokes. Confession was a crime/police show which aired from June 1958 to January 1959, with interviewer Jack Wyatt questioning criminals from assorted backgrounds.[6]

The radio series Nightwatch (1951–1955) tape-recorded the daily activities of Culver City, California police officers. The series You Asked for It (1950–1959) incorporated audience involvement by basing episodes around requests sent in by postcard from viewers.

1960s–1970s

First broadcast in the United Kingdom in 1964, the Granada Television television documentary Seven Up!, broadcast interviews with a dozen ordinary 7-year-olds from a broad cross-section of society and inquired about their reactions to everyday life. Every seven years, a film documented the life of the same individuals during the intervening period, titled the Up Series, episodes include "7 Plus Seven", "21 Up", etc.; it is still ongoing. The series was structured as a series of interviews with no element of plot. However, it did have the then-new effect of turning ordinary people into celebrities.

The first reality show in the modern sense may have been the series The American Sportsman, which ran from 1965 to 1986 on ABC in the United States.[7][8] A typical episode featured one or more celebrities, and sometimes their family members, being accompanied by a camera crew on an outdoor adventure, such as hunting, fishing, hiking, scuba diving, rock climbing, wildlife photography, horseback riding, race car driving, and the like, with most of the resulting action and dialogue being unscripted, except for the narration.

Another precursor may be considered Mutual of Omaha.s Wild Kingdom which aired from 1963 through 1988. This show featured zoologist Marlin Perhins travelig across the globe and illustrating the wide variety of animal life on the planet. Though mostly a travelogue, it was popular in syndication and new episodes were produced through the eighties.[9]

1980s–1990s

Producer Real People, a surprise hit for NBC, which ran from 1979 to 1984. The success of Real People was quickly copied by ABC with That's Incredible, a stunt show co-hosted by Fran Tarkenton. In Canada, Thrill of a Lifetime, a fantasies-fulfilled reality show that originally ran from 1982 to 1988 and was revived from 2001 to 2003.

In 1985, underwater cinematographer Al Giddings teamed with former Miss UniverseShawn Weatherly on the NBC series Oceanquest, which chronicled Weatherly's adventures scuba diving in various exotic locales. Weatherly was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in informational programming.[13]

The series Nummer 28, which aired on Dutch television in 1991, originated the concept of putting strangers together in the same environment for an extended period of time and recording the drama that ensued. Nummer 28 also pioneered many of the stylistic conventions that have since become standard in reality television shows, including a heavy use of soundtrack music and the interspersing of events on screen with after-the-fact "confessionals" recorded by cast members, that serve as narration. One year later, the same concept was used by MTV in its new series The Real World. Nummer 28 creator Erik Latour has long claimed that The Real World was directly inspired by his show;[15] however, the producers of The Real World have stated that their direct inspiration was An American Family.[16]

According to television commentator Charlie Brooker, this type of reality television was enabled by the advent of computer-based non-linear editing systems for video (such as produced by Avid Technology) in 1989. These systems made it easy to quickly edit hours of video footage into a usable form, something that had been very difficult to do before (film, which was easy to edit, was too expensive to shoot enough hours of footage with on a regular basis).[17]

The series Expedition Robinson, created by television producer Charlie Parsons, which first aired in 1997 in Sweden (and was later produced in a large number of other countries as Survivor), added to the Nummer 28/Real World template the idea of competition and elimination, in which cast members/contestants battled against each other and were removed from the show until only one winner remained (these shows are now sometimes called elimination shows).

The 1980s and 1990s were also a time when tabloid talk shows came to rise, many of which featured the same types of unusual or dysfunctional guests that would later become popular as cast members of reality shows.

2000s

Reality television saw an explosion of global popularity in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with the successes of the Big Brother and Survivor/Expedition Robinson franchises.

In the United States, reality television programs experienced a temporary decline in viewership in 2001, leading some entertainment industry columnists to speculate that the genre was a temporary fad that had run its course. Reality shows that suffered from low ratings included The Amazing Race (although the show has since recovered), Lost (unrelated to the better-known serial drama of the same name) and The Mole.[18]

However, this proved not to be the case for stronghold shows Survivor and American Idol that both topped the U.S. season-average television ratings in the 2000s: Survivor led the ratings in 2001–02, and Idol has the longest hold on the No. 1 rank in the American television ratings, dominating over all other primetime programs and other television series in the overall viewership tallies for eight consecutive years, from 2003–2004 to 2010–2011 television seasons.

In India, the competition show Indian Idol was the most popular television program for its first six seasons.[21]

The 2000s saw the launches of three television channels devoted exclusively to reality television: Fox Reality in the United States, which existed from 2005 to 2010; Global Reality Channel in Canada, which lasted two years from 2010 to 2012; and Zone Reality in the United Kingdom, which operated from 2002 to 2009). In addition, several other cable channels, including Bravo, A&E, E!, TLC, History, VH1 and MTV, changed their programming to mostly comprise reality television series during the 2000s.[22]

COPS has had huge success in syndication, direct response sales and DVD. A Fox staple since 1989, COPS has, as of 2013 (when it moved to cable channel Spike), outlasted all competing scripted police shows. Another series that has seen wide success is "Cheaters", which has been running since 2000 in the U.S. and is syndicated in over 100 countries worldwide.

In 2007, Internet entrepreneur Joel Comm hosted and produced what is believed to be the world's first competitive Internet reality show, The Next Internet Millionaire. Billed as The Apprentice meets YouTube, twelve contestants competed for a $25,000 cash prize. The show received an honorary Webby Award in its category in 2008.[23]

2010s

In 2010, The Tester became the first reality television show aired over a video game console.[24]

By 2012, many of the long-running reality television show franchises in the United States, such as American Idol, Dancing with the Stars and The Bachelor, had begun to see declining ratings.[25] However, reality television as a whole remained durable in the U.S., with hundreds of shows across many channels. In 2012 New York Magazine's Vulture blog published a humorous Venn diagram showing popular themes across American reality shows then running, including shows set in the U.S. states of Alaska, Louisiana and Texas, shows about cakes, weddings and pawnbrokers, and shows, usually competition-based, whose title includes the word "Wars".[26]

The Voice, a singing competition franchise created by John de Mol that started in 2010, is the newest highly successful reality television franchise, with almost 50 international adaptations.

Duck Dynasty, a reality series featuring the Robertson family that founded Duck Commander, in 2013 became the most popular reality series in U.S. cable television history. Its fourth season premiere was viewed by nearly 12 million viewers in the United States, most of which were in rural markets; its rural audience share has ranked in the 30s, an extremely high number for any series, broadcast or cable.[27]

In 2014, Entertainment Weekly again noted a stagnation in reality television programs' ratings in the U.S., which it attributed to "The diminishing returns of cable TV’s sea of reality sameness". It noted that a number of networks that featured reality programming, including Bravo and E!, were launching their first scripted shows; though it clarified that the genre as a whole "isn’t going anywhere."[28]

Subgenres

The genre of reality television consists of various subgenres. There are eight subgenres of reality television as proposed by Murray and Ouellette (2009).[29] These subgenres are: gamedocs, dating programs, makeover programs, docusoaps, talent contests, court programs, reality sitcoms, and celebrity variations of other programs.

Others such as Hill, Weibull, and Nilsson (2007, p. 18)[30] suggest that five subgenres or categories exist. They suggest the following: infotainment, docusoap, lifestyle, reality game shows, and lifestyle experiment programs as main categories of reality TV. Nabi et al. (2006, p. 433)[31] on the other hand, proposed a categorization based on six main topics: romance, crime, informational, reality-drama, competition/game, and talent. Similarly, Fitzgerald (2003) proposed a similar categorization focusing on talent and survival competitions, personal makeover, home makeover, get-rich-quick schemes, docudramas, and "Mr. Right" programs.[32]

Still others suggest that categorization can be determined by either narrative or performation reality.[33] Narrative reality television is based on "entertaining the viewers by an authentic or staged rendition of extraordinary, real, or close-to-reality events with non-prominent actors, whereas formats providing a stage for uncommon performances with a direct impact on the participants' lives fall into the category of performative reality TV."[34] From the perspective of Klaus and Lucke,"docusoaps" portray people in their usual living environment and "reality soaps" bring them in a new, uncommon environment." [34]

Documentary-style

In many reality television programs, camera shooting and footage editing give the viewer the impression that they are passive observers following people going about their daily personal and professional activities; this style of filming is sometimes referred to as fly on the wall or factual television. Story "plots" are often constructed via editing or planned situations, with the results resembling soap operas – hence the terms docusoap and docudrama. Documentary-style programs give viewers a private look into the lives of the subjects.

Within documentary-style reality television are several subcategories or variants:

Special living environment

Some documentary-style programs place cast members, who in most cases previously did not know each other, in artificial living environments; The Real World is the originator of this style. In almost every other such show, cast members are given specific challenges or obstacles to overcome. Road Rules, which started in 1995 as a spin-off of The Real World, started this pattern: the cast traveled across the country guided by clues and performing tasks.

Big Brother is probably the best known program of this type in the world, with around 50 international versions having been produced. Another example of a show in this category The 1900 House, involves historical re-enactment with cast members hired to live and work as people of a specific time and place. 2001's Temptation Island achieved some notoriety by placing several couples on an island surrounded by single people in order to test the couples' commitment to each other. U8TV: The Lofters combined the "special living environment" format with the "professional activity" format noted below; in addition to living together in a loft, each member of the show's cast was hired to host a television program for a Canadian cable channel.

Soap-opera style

Although the term "docusoap" has been used for many documentary-style reality television shows, there have been shows that have deliberately tried to mimic the appearance and structure of soap operas. Such shows often focus on a close-knit group of people and their shifting friendships and romantic relationships. One highly influential such series was the American 2004–2006 series Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County, which attempted to specifically mimic the primetime soap opera The O.C., which had begun airing in 2003. Laguna Beach had a more cinematic feel than any previous reality television show, through the use of higher-quality lighting and cameras, voice-over narration instead of on-screen "confessionals", and slower pacing.[35]Laguna Beach led to several spinoff series, most notably the 2006–2010 series The Hills. It also inspired various other series, including the highly successful British series The Only Way Is Essex and Made in Chelsea, and the Australian series Freshwater Blue.

Due to their cinematic feel, many of these shows have been accused of being pre-scripted, moreso than other reality television shows have. The producers of The Only Way Is Essex and Made in Chelsea have admitted to coaching cast members on what to say in order to draw more emotion from each scene, although they insist that the underlying stories are real.[36]

Another highly successful group of soap-opera-style shows is the Real Housewives franchise, which began with The Real Housewives of Orange County in 2006 and has since spawned nearly twenty other series, in the U.S. and internationally. The franchise has an older cast and different personal dynamics than that of Laguna Beach and its imitators, as well as lower production values, but similarly is meant to resemble scripted soap operas – in this case, the television series Desperate Housewives and Peyton Place.

Some documentary-style shows portray professionals either going about day-to-day business or performing an entire project over the course of a series. One early example (and the longest running reality show of any genre) is COPS, which has been airing since 1989.

VH1's 2001 show Bands on the Run was a notable early hybrid, in that the show featured four unsigned bands touring and making music as a professional activity, but also pitted the bands against one another in game show fashion to see which band could make the most money.

Though the litigants are legitimate, the "judges" in such shows are actually arbitrators, as these pseudo-judges are not actually presiding in a court of law. Typically, however, they are retired judges, or at least individuals who have had some legal experience.

Another subgenre of reality legal programming are law enforcement documentaries. Law enforcement documentaries are programs that capture police officers on duty. These shows tend to be shocking in nature as they consist of individuals caught in real-life criminal acts and circumstances, as well as confrontations with police officers. The most successful installment of this subgenre is Cops.

Reality competition/game shows

Another sub-genre of reality television is "reality competition", "reality playoffs", or so-called "reality game shows," which follow the format of non-tournament elimination contests. Typically, participants are filmed competing to win a prize, often while living together in a confined environment. In many cases, participants are removed until only one person or team remains, who/which is then declared the winner. Usually this is done by eliminating participants one at a time (of sometimes two at a time, as an episodic twist due to the number of contestants involved and the length of a given season), through either disapproval voting or by voting for the most popular choice to win. Voting is done by the viewing audience, the show's own participants, a panel of judges, or some combination of the three.

A well-known example of a reality-competition show is the globally syndicated Big Brother, in which cast members live together in the same house, with participants removed at regular intervals by either the viewing audience or, in the case of the American version, by the participants themselves.

There remains disagreement over whether talent-search shows such as the Idol series, the Got Talent series and the Dancing with the Stars series are truly reality television, or just newer incarnations of shows such as Star Search. Although the shows involve a traditional talent search, the shows follow the reality-competition conventions of removing one or more contestants in every episode, allowing the public to vote on who is removed, and interspersing performances with video clips showing the contestants' "back stories", their thoughts about the competition, their rehearsals and unguarded behind-the-scenes moments. Additionally, there is a good deal of unscripted interaction shown between contestants and judges. The American Primetime Emmy Awards have nominated both American Idol and Dancing with the Stars for the Outstanding Reality-Competition Program Emmy.

Game shows like Weakest Link, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, American Gladiators and Deal or No Deal, which were popular in the 2000s, also lie in a gray area: like traditional game shows (e.g., The Price Is Right, Jeopardy!), the action takes place in an enclosed television studio over a short period of time; however, they have higher production values, more dramatic background music, and higher stakes than traditional shows (done either through putting contestants into physical danger or offering large cash prizes). In addition, there is more interaction between contestants and hosts, and in some cases they feature reality-style contestant competition and/or elimination as well. These factors, as well as these shows' rise in global popularity at the same time as the arrival of the reality craze, have led to such shows often being grouped under both the reality television and game show umbrellas.[37]

There have been various hybrid reality-competition shows, like the worldwide-syndicated Star Academy, which combines the Big Brother and Idol formats, The Biggest Loser, which combines competition with the self-improvement format, and American Inventor, which uses the Idol format for products instead of people. Some reality shows that aired mostly during the early 2000s, such as Popstars, Making the Band and Project Greenlight, devoted the first part of the season to selecting a winner, and the second part to showing that person or group of people working on a project.

Popular variants of the competition-based format include the following:

Dating-based competition

Dating-based competition shows follow a contestant choosing one out of a group of suitors. Over the course of either a single episode or an entire season, suitors are eliminated until only the contestant and the final suitor remains. In the early 2000s, this type of reality show dominated the other genres on the major U.S. networks. Shows that aired included The Bachelor, its spin-off The Bachelorette, as well as Temptation Island and Average Joe. In Married by America, contestants were chosen by viewer voting. More recent such shows include Flavor of Love (a dating show featuring rapper Flavor Flav that led directly and indirectly to over 10 spinoffs), The Cougar and Love in the Wild. This is one of the older variants of the format; shows such as The Dating Game that date to the 1960s had similar premises (though each episode was self-contained, and not the serial format of more modern shows).

Job search

In this category, the competition revolves around a skill that contestants were pre-screened for. Competitors perform a variety of tasks based on that skill, are judged, and are then kept or removed by a single expert or a panel of experts. The show is usually presented as a job search of some kind, in which the prize for the winner includes a contract to perform that kind of work and an undisclosed salary, although the award can simply be a sum of money and ancillary prizes, like a cover article in a magazine. The show also features judges who act as counselors, mediators and sometimes mentors to help contestants develop their skills further or perhaps decide their future position in the competition. Popstars, which debuted in 1999, may have been the first such show, while the Idol series has been the longest-running and, for most of its run, the most popular such franchise. The first job-search show which showed dramatic, unscripted situations may have been America's Next Top Model, which premiered in May 2003. Other examples include The Apprentice (which judges business skills); Hell's Kitchen, MasterChef and Top Chef (for chefs); Shear Genius (for hair styling), Project Runway (for clothing design), Top Design (for interior design), Stylista (for fashion editors), Last Comic Standing (for comedians), I Know My Kid's a Star (for child performers), On the Lot (for filmmakers), RuPaul's Drag Race (for drag queens), The Shot (for fashion photographers), So You Think You Can Dance (for dancers), MuchMusic VJ Search and Food Network Star (for television hosts), Dream Job (for sportscasters), Work of Art (for artists), Face Off (for makeup artists), Ink Master (for tattoo artists), Platinum Hit (for songwriters) and The Tester (for game testers).

Some shows use the same format with celebrities: in this case, there is no expectation that the winner will continue this line of work, and prize winnings often go to charity. The most popular such shows have been the Dancing with the Stars and Dancing on Ice franchises. Other examples of celebrity competition programs include Deadline, Celebracadabra and Celebrity Apprentice.

Sports

Most of these programs create a sporting competition among athletes attempting to establish their name in that sport. The Club, in 2002, was one of the first shows to immerse sport with reality television, based on a fabricated club competing against real clubs in the sport of Australian rules football; the audience helped select which players played each week by voting for their favorites. Golf Channel's The Big Break is a reality show in which aspiring golfers compete against one another and are eliminated. The Contender, a boxing show, became the first American reality show in which a contestant committed suicide after being eliminated from the show; the show's winner was promised a shot at a boxing world championship. Sergio Mora, who won, indeed got his title shot and became a world champion boxer. In The Ultimate Fighter, participants have voluntarily withdrawn or expressed the desire to withdraw from the show due to competitive pressure.

In sports shows, sometimes just appearing on the show, not necessarily winning, can get a contestant the job. The owner of UFC declared that the final match of the first season of Ultimate Fighter was so good, both contestants were offered a contract, and in addition, many non-winning "TUF Alumni" have prospered in the UFC. Many of the losers from World Wrestling Entertainment's Tough Enough and Diva Search shows have been picked up by the company.

Immunity

One concept pioneered by, and unique to, reality competition shows is the idea of immunity, in which a contestant can win the right to be exempt the next time contestants are eliminated from the show. This concept was conceived by Mark Burnett, the producer of the American version of Survivor, for that show's first season in 2000. On Survivor the rules around immunity are more complex than they have been on most shows since then: a player achieves immunity through finding a hidden totem, but they can keep this fact a secret from other players; they can also pass on their immunity to someone else.[38] On most shows, immunity is instead achieved by winning a task, often a relatively minor task during the first half of the episode; the announcement of immunity is made publicly and immunity is non-transferable. Competition shows that feature immunity include the Apprentice, Big Brother, Biggest Loser, Top Model and Top Chef franchises. In one Apprentice episode, a participant chose to waive his earned immunity and was immediately "fired" by Donald Trump for giving up this powerful asset.[39]

Confession room

Another common characteristic of reality competition shows is the presence of a confession room, or confessional interviews, wherein contestants "confess" details of their strategy/gameplay or their concerns and struggles on the show.

Self-improvement/makeover

Some reality television shows cover a person or group of people improving their lives. Sometimes the same group of people are covered over an entire season (as in The Swan and Celebrity Fit Club), but usually there is a new target for improvement in each episode. Despite differences in the content, the format is usually the same: first the show introduces the subjects in their current, less-than-ideal environment. Then the subjects meet with a group of experts, who give the subjects instructions on how to improve things; they offer aid and encouragement along the way. Finally, the subjects are placed back in their environment and they, along with their friends and family and the experts, appraise the changes that have occurred. Other self-improvement or makeover shows include The Biggest Loser, Extreme Weight Loss and Fat March (which covers weight loss), Extreme Makeover (entire physical appearance), Queer Eye, What Not to Wear and How Do I Look? (style and grooming), Supernanny (child-rearing), Made (life transformation), Trinny & Susannah Undress and Bridalplasty (fashion and cosmetic makeover and marriage), Tool Academy (relationship building) and Charm School and From G's to Gents (self-improvement and manners). The British programme Snog Marry Avoid?, presented by Ellie Taylor sees members of the public, who usually have a wild dress sense or wear excess make-up and "fakery," have a makeover to make them look more "normal" or presentable.

The issue of "making over" was taken to its social extreme with the British show Life Laundry, in which people who had become hoarders, even living in squalor, were given professional assistance. The American television series Hoarders and Hoarding: Buried Alive follow similar premises, presenting interventions in the lives of people who suffer from compulsive hoarding. As with game shows, a gray area exists between such reality television shows and more conventional formats. Some argue the key difference is the emphasis of the human story and conflicts of reality shows, versus the emphasis on process and information in more traditional format shows.

Social experiment

Another type of reality program is the social experiment that produces drama, conflict, and sometimes transformation. Wife Swap, which began in 2003 on Channel 4, and has aired for four seasons on ABC (in addition to producing a spin-off, Celebrity Wife Swap), is a notable example. People with different values agreed to live by each other's social rules for a brief period of time and sometimes learn from the experience. Other shows in this category include Trading Spouses, The Bad Girls Club, the British programme Holiday Showdown and Secret Millionaire. Faking It was a series where people had to learn a new skill and pass themselves off as experts in that skill. Shattered was a controversial 2004 UK series in which contestants competed for how long they could go without sleep. Solitary was a controversial 2006-2010 Fox Reality series that isolated contestants for weeks in solitary confinement pods with limited sleep, food and information while competing in elimination challenges ended by a quit button, causing winners to go on for much longer than needed as a blind gamble to not be the first person to quit.

Not all hidden camera shows use strictly staged situations. For example, the syndicated program Cheaters, purports to use hidden cameras to record suspected cheating partners, although the authenticity of the show has been questioned, and even refuted by some who have been featured on the series.[41] Once the evidence has been gathered, the accuser confronts the cheating partner with the assistance of the host. In many special-living documentary programs, hidden cameras are set up all over the residence in order to capture moments missed by the regular camera crew, or intimate bedroom footage.

Other shows, though not hoax shows per se, have offered misleading information to some cast members in order to add a wrinkle to the competition. Examples include Boy Meets Boy and Joe Millionaire.

Criticism and analysis

"Reality" as misnomer

The authenticity of reality television is often called into question by its detractors. The genre's title of "reality" is often criticized as being inaccurate because of claims that the genre frequently includes elements such as premeditated scripting, acting, urgings from behind-the-scenes crew to create specified situations of adversity and drama and misleading editing. It has often been described as "scripting without paper".

In many cases, the entire premise of the show is a contrived one, based around a competition or another unusual situation. However, various shows have additionally been accused of using fakery in order to create more compelling television, such as having premeditated storylines and in some cases feeding participants lines of dialogue, focusing only on participants' most outlandish behavior, and altering events through editing and re-shoots.[45][46]

Television shows that have been criticized for, or admitted to, deception include The Real World,[47][48][49] the U.S. version of Survivor,[50]Joe Millionaire,[51]The Hills, Hell's Kitchen,[52]A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila,[53]Hogan Knows Best,[54]Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,[55]The Bachelor and The Bachelorette[56][57][58][59][60][61] and Pawn Stars.[62] As of 2013, the American series Storage Wars is the subject of a pending lawsuit,[63] and Keeping Up with the Kardashians part of a divorce deposition, both due to allegations of fraud.[64][65]

Political and cultural impact

Reality television's global successes has been, in the eyes of some analysts, an important political phenomenon. In some authoritarian countries, reality television voting has been the first time many citizens have voted in any free and fair wide-scale elections. In addition, the frankness of the settings on some reality shows present situations that are often taboo in certain orthodox cultures, like Star Academy Arab World, which began airing in 2003, and which shows male and female contestants living together.[66] A Pan-Arab version of Big Brother was cancelled in 2004 after less than two weeks on the air after a public outcry and street protests.[67] In 2004, journalist Matt Labash, noting both of these issues, wrote that "the best hope of little Americas developing in the Middle East could be Arab-produced reality TV."[68]

In 2007, Abu Dhabi TV began airing Million's Poet, a show featuring Pop Idol-style voting and elimination, but for the writing and oration of Arabic poetry. The show became popular in Arab countries, with around 18 million viewers,[69] partly because it was able to combine the excitement of reality television with a traditional, culturally relevant topic.[70] In April 2010, however, the show also become a subject of political controversy, when Hissa Hilal, a 43-year-old female Saudi competitor, read out a poem criticizing her country's Muslim clerics.[71] Hilal's poetry was well received by both critics and the public; she received the highest scores from the judges throughout the competition, and came in third place overall.[69]

In India, in the summer of 2007, coverage of the third season of Indian Idol focused on the breaking down of cultural and socioeconomic barriers as the public rallied around the show's top two contestants.[21]

The Chinese singing competition Super Girl (a local imitation of Pop Idol) has similarly been cited for its political and cultural impact.[72] After the finale of the show's 2005 season drew an audience of around 400 million people, and eight million text message votes, the state-run English-language newspaper Beijing Today ran the front-page headline "Is Super Girl a Force for Democracy?"[73] The Chinese government criticized the show, citing both its democratic nature and its excessive vulgarity, or "worldliness",[74] and in 2006 banned it outright.[75] It was later reintroduced in 2009, before being banned again in 2011. Super Girl has also been criticized by non-government commentators for creating seemingly impossible ideals that may be harmful to Chinese youth.[72]

In Indonesia, reality television shows have surpassed soap operas as the most-watched programs on the air.[76] One popular program is Jika Aku Menjadi ("If I Were"), which follows young, middle-class people as they are temporarily placed into lower-class life, where they learn to appreciate their circumstances back home by experiencing daily life for the less fortunate.[76] Critics have claimed that this and similar programs in Indonesia reinforce traditionally Western ideals of materialism and consumerism.[76] However, Eko Nugroho, reality show producer and president of Dreamlight World Media, insists that these reality shows are not promoting American lifestyles but rather reaching people through their universal desires.[76]

As a substitute for scripted drama

VH1 executive vice president Michael Hirschorn wrote that the plots and subject matters on reality television are more authentic and more engaging than in scripted dramas, writing that scripted network television "remains dominated by variants on the police procedural... in which a stock group of characters (ethnically, sexually, and generationally diverse) grapples with endless versions of the same dilemma. The episodes have all the ritual predictability of Japanese Noh theater," while reality television is "the liveliest genre on the set right now. It has engaged hot-button cultural issues – class, sex, race – that respectable television... rarely touches."[77]

Television criticJames Poniewozik wrote that reality shows like Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckers showcase working-class people of the kind that "used to be routine" on scripted network television, but that became a rarity in the 2000s: "The better to woo upscale viewers, TV has evicted its mechanics and dockworkers to collect higher rents from yuppies in coffeehouses."[78] In addition to bringing in substantial revenues, such programs generally cost less to produce than scripted series.

Lighting crews are typically present in the background of reality television shows.

Sound crews are typically present in the background of reality television shows.

Reality television personalities are sometimes derided as "Z-list celebrities", "Bravolebrities", and/or "nonebrities" who are effectively "famous for being famous" yet have done nothing to warrant their sudden fame.[81] Some have been lampooned for exploiting an undeserved "15 minutes of fame".[82] The Kardashian family is one such group of reality television personalities who were subject to this criticism in the 2010s,[82][83] Kim Kardashian in particular.[84][85][86]

Youth audience

In 2006, four of the ten most popular programs among viewers under 17 were reality shows.[87] Studies have shown that young people emulate the behavior displayed on these programs, gathering much of their knowledge of the social world, particularly about consumer practices, from television.[72][88][89][90] Many of the programs watched by teens contain questionable role models,[91] in particular the representation of sexually objectified women in shows like The Girls Next Door.[92][93]

In 2007, according to the Learning and Skills Council, one in seven UK teenagers hoped to gain fame by appearing on reality television.[94]

Appeal

A number of studies have tried to pinpoint the appeal of reality television.[95] Factors that have been cited in its appeal include personal identification with the onscreen participants; pure entertainment; diversion from scripted TV; vicarious participation;[96] a feeling of self-importance compared to onscreen participants;[97] enjoyment of competition;[97] and an appeal to voyeurism, especially given "scenes which take place in private settings, contain nudity, and/or include gossip".[98][99][100]

Similar works in popular culture

A number of fictional works since the 1940s have contained elements similar to elements of reality television. They tended to be set in a dystopian future, with subjects being recorded against their will, and often involved violence.

"The Seventh Victim" (1953) was a short story by science fiction author Robert Sheckley that depicted a futuristic game in which one player gets to hunt down another player and kill him. The first player who can score ten kills wins the grand prize. This story was the basis for the Italian film The 10th Victim (1965).

You're Another, a 1955 short story by Damon Knight, is about a man who discovers that he is an actor in a "livie", a live-action show that is viewed by billions of people in the future.

A King in New York, a 1957 film written and directed by Charlie Chaplin has the main character, a fictional European monarch portrayed by Chaplin, secretly filmed while talking to people at a New York cocktail party. The footage is later turned into a television show within the film.

"The Prize of Peril"[101] (1958), another Robert Sheckley story, was about a television show in which a contestant volunteers to be hunted for a week by trained killers, with a large cash prize if he survives. It was adapted in 1970 as the TV movie Das Millionenspiel, and again in 1983 as the movie Le Prix du Danger.

Richard G. Stern's novel Golk (1960) was about a hidden-camera show similar to Candid Camera.

"It Could Be You" (1964), a short story by Australian Frank Roberts, features a day-in-day-out televised blood sport.

Survivor (1965), a science fiction story by Walter F. Moudy, depicted the 2050 "Olympic War Games" between Russia and the United States. The games are fought to show the world the futility of war and thus deter further conflict. Each side has one hundred soldiers who fight in a large natural arena. The goal is for one side to wipe out the other; the few who survive the battle become heroes. The games are televised, complete with color commentary discussing tactics, soldiers' personal backgrounds, and slow-motion replays of their deaths.

"Bread and Circuses" (1968) was an episode of the science fiction television series Star Trek in which the crew visits a planet resembling the Roman Empire, but with 20th-century technology. The planet's "Empire TV" features regular gladiatorial games, with the announcer urging viewers at home to vote for their favorites, stating, "This is your program. You pick the winner."

The Year of the Sex Olympics (1968) was a BBC television play in which a dissident in a dictatorship is forced onto a secluded island and taped for a reality show in order to keep the masses entertained.

The Unsleeping Eye (1973), a novel by D.G. Compton (also published as The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe), was about a woman dying of cancer whose last days are recorded without her knowledge for a television show. It was later adapted as the 1980 movie Death Watch.

"Ladies And Gentlemen, This Is Your Crisis" (1976) was a short story by science fiction author Kate Wilhelm about a television show in which contestants (including a B-list actress who is hoping to revitalize her career) attempt to make their way to a checkpoint after being dropped off in the Alaskan wilderness, while being filmed and broadcast around the clock through an entire weekend. The story focuses primarily on the show's effect on a couple whose domestic tensions and eventual reconciliation parallel the dangers faced by the contestants.

Network (1976) includes a subplot in which network executives negotiate with an urban terrorist group for the production of a weekly series, each episode of which was to feature an act of terrorism.

The Running Man (1982) was a book by Stephen King depicting a game show in which a contestant flees around the world from "hunters" trying to chase him down and kill him; it has been speculated that the book was inspired by Robert Sheckley's The Prize of Peril. The book was loosely adapted as a 1987 movie of the same name. The movie removed most of the reality-TV element of the book: its competition now took place entirely within a large television studio, and more closely resembled an athletic competition (though a deadly one).

The film 20 Minutes into the Future (1985), and the spin-off television series Max Headroom, revolved around television mainly based on live, often candid, broadcasts. In one episode of Max Headroom, "Academy", the character Blank Reg fights for his life on a courtroom game show, with the audience deciding his fate.

Vengeance on Varos (1985) was an episode of the television show Doctor Who in which the population of a planet watches live television broadcasts of the torture and executions of those who oppose the government. The planet's political system is based on the leaders themselves facing disintegration if the population votes 'no' to their propositions.

Pop culture references

Some scripted and written works have used reality television as a plot device:

Films

Halloween: Resurrection (2002) is a horror/slasher film that takes place in a wired house full of surveillance cameras. Each "contestant" is recorded as they attempt to survive and solve the mystery of the murders.

American Dreamz (2006) is a film set partially on an American Idol-like show.

Television

The Comeback (2005) satirizes the indignity of reality television by presenting itself as "raw footage" of a new reality show documenting the attempted comeback of has-been star Valerie Cherish.

Dead Set is a British television programme featuring a zombie apocalypse affecting the Big Brother house. Part of the film was shot during an actual eviction with host Davina McCall making a cameo appearance.

Rock Rivals (2008) is a British television show about two judges on a televised singing contest whose marriage is falling apart.

In 2007, broadcaster Krishnan Guru-Murthy stated that reality television is "a firm and embedded part of television's vocabulary, used in every genre from game-shows and drama to news and current affairs."[106]

The mumblecore film genre, which began in the mid-2000s, and uses video cameras and relies heavily on improvisation and non-professional actors, has been described as influenced in part by what one critic called "the spring-break psychodrama of MTV's The Real World". Mumblecore director Joe Swanberg has said, "As annoying as reality TV is, it's been really good for filmmakers because it got mainstream audiences used to watching shaky camerawork and different kinds of situations."[107]

^"Syracuse.com - Guest column: These new reality hunting TV shows are out of control". Retrieved October 17, 2013.The Post-Standard newspaper, Syracuse, New York, December 21, 2012, by Tom Adessa. "As a teenager, I always looked forward to Sunday afternoons when I’d watch Curt Gowdy and his TV show, 'The American Sportsman.' Gowdy had a distinct, soft-spoken demeanor and the destinations of his hunts were in various parts of the world."

^The American Sportsman' Penetrates the Awesome World of the Shark"'". Retrieved October 17, 2013.The News and Courier newspaper, February 8, 1975, Charleston, South Carolina. "Peter Benchley's journey to the world of the White Shark is an evocative portrait of one of nature's extraordinary phenomena, the shark, and of one man's revealing transition from the world of fantasy to the world of underwater reality. The American Sportsman is produced and directed by Neil Cunningham and hosted by Curt Gowdy."

^Lodish, E. (2013, June 25). Who would win a World Idol competition? Retrieved November 30, 2014, from http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/culture-lifestyle/entertainment/130625/arab-idol-mohammed-assaf-world-singers

^Star Academy reality show comes to town. (2014, February 21). Retrieved November 30, 2014, from http://vietnamnews.vn/life-style/251419/star-academy-reality-show-comes-to-town.html

^McDow, Christine (June 28, 2011). "Jesse Csincsak Talks About Ashley Hebert And Last Night’s The Bachelorette". Reality TV Magazine. Retrieved July 10, 2012. The viewers are seeing the PRODUCED side of her show and not so much the genuine stuff, and she looks silly because of it... A LOT TAKES PLACE IN THE EDITING ROOM!

^Dehnart, Andy (March 16, 2010). "Bachelors have sex with an average of three women, but Bob Guiney has the record with 5.5". Reality Blurred. Retrieved July 10, 2012. “We need our fair share of villains every season. And now we’re very careful in our casting...to develop characters that the audience is going to root for and root against”

^"Today’s TV Addict Top 5: Wildly Disturbing Quotes from THE BACHELOR creator/executive producer Mike Fleiss". Today’s TV Addict. March 18, 2010. Retrieved July 10, 2012. “We are very careful in our casting to develop characters that the audience is going to root for and root against.” Fleiss admits that his show has less to do with “reality” than it does making good television. Which is all fine and good... if a few moments later he hadn’t claimed that the whole premise was romance and the search for love.

^Battista, Kathy (2012). "Cindy Hinant's Make-Up, Glamour and TV Show". Phaidon. Retrieved 23 November 2014. Such women are symbolic of both the triumph and failure of consumerism and popular culture, where Playboy models and reality TV stars are revered by a younger, impressionable generation.

^Barton, Jennifer (2010). Bunny Talk: Teenagers Discuss The Girls Next Door. London: Media@ LSE , London School of Economics and Political Science. Retrieved 23 November 2014.

Gillan, J. (2004). From Ozzie Nelson to Ozzy Osbourne: The genesis and the development of the reality (star) sitcom. in S. Holmes & D. Jermyn (eds.), Understanding reality television (pp. 54–70). London and New York: Routledge.

Hearn, A. (2009). Hoaxing the "real": on the metanarrative of reality television. in S. Murray & L. Ouellette (eds.), Reality TV: Remaking television culture (pp. 165–178). 2nd ed., New York and London: New York University Press.

Hendershot, H. (2009). Belabored reality: Making it work on The Simple Life and Project Runway. In S. Murray & L. Ouellette (eds.), Reality TV: Remaking television culture (pp. 243–259). 2nd ed., New York and London: New York University Press.

Hetsroni, A., & Tukachinsky, R. H. (2003). "Who wants to be a millionaire" in America, Russia, and Saudi Arabia: A celebration of differences or a unified global culture? The Communication Review, 6(2), 165-178.

James, C. (2003, January 26). Bachelor No.1 and the birth of reality TV. The New York Times. Retrieved May 22, 2012 from http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/movies/television-radio-bachelor-no- 1-and-the-birthof-reality-tv.html.

Jenkins, H. (2009). Buying into American idol: How we are being sold on reality television. in S. Murray & L. Ouellette (eds.), Reality TV: Remaking television culture (pp. 343–362). 2nd edition, New York and London: New York University Press.

Jermyn, D. (2004). "This is about real people!" Video technologies, actuality and affect in the television crime appeal. In S. Holmes & D. Jermyn, (eds.), Understanding reality television (pp. 71–90). London and New York: Routledge.

McCarthy, A. (2009). "Stanley Milgram, Allen Funt and Me": Postwar social science and the first wave of reality TV. In S. Murray & L. Ouellette (eds.), Reality TV: Remaking television culture (pp. 23–43). 2nd ed., New York and London: New York University Press.

Murray, S. (2009). "I think we need a new name for it": The meeting of documentary and reality TV. in S. Murray & L. Ouellette (eds.), Reality TV: Remaking television culture (pp. 65–81). 2nd ed., New York and London: New York University Press.

This article was sourced from Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. World Heritage Encyclopedia content is assembled from numerous content providers, Open Access Publishing, and in compliance with The Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR), Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., Public Library of Science, The Encyclopedia of Life, Open Book Publishers (OBP), PubMed, U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and USA.gov, which sources content from all federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial government publication portals (.gov, .mil, .edu). Funding for USA.gov and content contributors is made possible from the U.S. Congress, E-Government Act of 2002.

Crowd sourced content that is contributed to World Heritage Encyclopedia is peer reviewed and edited by our editorial staff to ensure quality scholarly research articles.

By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. World Heritage Encyclopedia™ is a registered trademark of the World Public Library Association, a non-profit organization.